“I hate it when they say “grassroots, it has to come from the grass roots”, it makes me feel like I am being trampled on.” A Thai Villager.........................
A blog that is partly an exploration of democrasubjection - the subjection of people to democratic forms of rule.

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May 24, 2008

Article 7 was perhaps one of the most well known articles of the 1997 Constitution during the 2005-2006 rallies against Thaksin Shinawatra. It was used first to call for political reform initiated by the king and then later for a royally appointed government, which the king famously rejected in late April 2006.

In "Article of Faith" I look at how this article was inserted into the 1997 constitution, noting that it was an attempt to safeguard conservative notions of rule.

Article 7 reads:

"Whenever no provision under this Constitution is applicable to any case, it shall be decided in accordance with the constitutional practice in the democratic regime of government with the King as Head of the State" (Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand, 1997).

The above is an official translation of Article 7, and it's how I have referred to it elsewhere, as have others. It's worth noting that a more literal translation would be:

"Whenever no provision under this Constitution is applicable to any case, it shall be decided in accordance with traditions/conventions of governmment (ประเพณีการปกครอง) in a democratic regime with the king as head of state."

The term 'constitutional practice' then should be understood in the manner of Britain's unwritten constitution.

When Article 7 was inserted into the 1997 draft constitution a veteran left politician noted that its substance was in accord with the far ranging powers contained in coup-generated constitutions. That claim was right. Its first appearance was in the 1959 constitution under Sarit. Interestingly though, the term “democratic regime with the king as head of state” appears in this context only in the 1997 constitution, the 2006 interim constitution and the pseudo-referendum constitution of 2007.

Variations on Article 7 are found in all constitutions (differently numbered) from 1959 with the exception of the 1968 constituion.

Why is it that, in combination and contest, the liberal and democratic (electoral) positive aspects of Thailand’s history come to be expressed by authoritarian modes of power?

Thailand has a rich liberal and democratic heritage, the deepening discourses of these currents in the last generation represents a societal gain occasioned by mass struggle and incremental emergence by liberal regime framers. While the democratic forces of popular society have often been willing to ally with liberal elites to extend the political space upon which they can work on distributional and identity issues, elite liberal forces have not sanctioned an expansion of democratic space into substantive economic questions –viewing civil society as a place of tempered civic virtue and a place of social learning and political socialisation.

In the 2000s, the historical failure of Thai liberalism to deal with fundamental class grievances was grasped as an opportunity by an instrumental populist who sought to mobilise electoral weight to break through the liberal-bureaucratic compact and shift the terms of Thailand’s political economy. His populism dramatised by the “three narratives” of giving, being of the people and acting on their will )Pasuk and Baker, 2008), was made concrete by extraordinary measures to address grievances geared not simply at redistribution and alleviation but at a reconfiguration of power in Thailand. Thaksin’s wielding of the democratic gains of Thai politics, his willingness to enter the competitive fray, led to the disarticulation of an already precariously balanced liberalism and democracy (electoralism). That move laid open the possibility of the potential emergence of an electoral authoritarian regime that might permanently quash the politically liberal current, pushing such currents back into the “soft-authoritarian” arms of the noble state.

The clash of these modes of power laid the basis for the current authoritarian paradox in Thailand. In the battle between modes of order, each force competed with the other and attempted to restrain the other, ultimately resorting to authoritarian methods. Each force has failed to become institutionalised, leaving strategic elites to play games of absolute advantage, further enforcing the authoritarian impulse. Each force necessarily articulates to existing state institutions or supportive elements therein, whose substance is neither liberal nor democratic. The two positives – in a tortured historical process - have produced a negative – a decisionist authoritarianism of state and liberal regime framers.

The Culprit

I teach politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne. For the moment this blog is fairly inactive, but I will keep existing posts available. Views expressed here are my own.
The site aims to avoid blogatry - indigent analysis based on casual bile. Sometimes, it fails.